Sports

Call it the calm before the storm.

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I haven’t been putting my posts on the Sports TV Wars on Bleacher Report (with only one exception), because I use terminology like “Sports TV Wars” that would likely turn off the uninitiated. But they are posts on actual news stories, and I’d like to be able to establish myself as an “expert” of sorts on the topic, a sort of go-to place for analysis for those interested, which putting them on Bleacher Report can only help, so I keep not liking my inability to put them there.

So seeing my recent post on the Breeder’s Cup’s move to NBC get linked to on the Fang’s Bites blog gave me pause. Not merely because Fang’s Bites is a vaguely prominent blog in sports media circles, one I personally follow (sometimes), run by someone I’ve had… interesting run-ins with on Twitter, who nonetheless never links to my posts despite almost recommending the site to people two years ago (if only I wasn’t trying to move to MorganWick.com at the time). But clearly he felt the post was accessible enough to his audience, though to be fair the only obtuse terminology I use in that post is a single, easily-missed reference to “wars”.

So I’m wondering… should I keep doing what I’m doing (and maybe work harder on the Wars posts to make them more worthy of such links)? Cut down on the obtuse references to my own personal concepts so I can put them on B/R? Or perhaps my Wars posts are accessible enough to put on B/R as is? Would people understand them on B/R if I just did a little introductory post to get them acclimated?

The floor is open for your opinion on this sensitive topic.

An Early-Week Super Bowl Preview

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Median Expected Score
Giants 26
Patriots 29

Four years later, they meet again. The last time these teams did this it resulted in one of the best Super Bowls of all time, and quite possibly the best game of the entire last decade. Can the rematch live up to the original?

Probably not. Last time, the Patriots were trying to become the second team in NFL history to go completely undefeated in the regular season and postseason, while the Giants were the scrappy underdogs that just barely squeaked into the playoffs and shocked the world in the Super Bowl. This year, the Giants made another Cinderella run, but they aren’t quite shocking the world the way they did four years ago; they actually won their division, more than a few people noted how hot they were playing down the stretch, and they’ve already beaten the team that tried to go unbeaten this year. Meanwhile, the Patriots were the class of a rather inferior AFC, hardly showing the dominance of four years ago and showing a decided weakness on defense, admittedly like most of the league’s best teams. Both teams needed miscues from their championship game opponents to get here, and we already saw this year’s sports movie. None of the context that went into the game four years ago is there, and that alone will probably keep it from living up to that level.

That the Giants are playing as well as they are does throw in a few storylines of its own, however. Probably one of the bigger ones involves Eli Manning. Four years ago, no one thought he would ever be anywhere near as good as his brother. He’s since become one of the league’s better quarterbacks, but still raised eyebrows in the preseason when he claimed that he should be considered an elite quarterback on par with Tom Brady. While he didn’t put up the gaudy numbers Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, or Brady put up this year, he still managed to silence the critics and prove that he really is that good a quarterback, being named the NFC’s quarterback in the Pro Bowl behind Rodgers and Brees. Now he has a chance to actually double his brother’s Super Bowl count, possibly for all time. And who does he have a chance to beat to do it? Why, Tom Brady, of course.

Brady has already cemented a Hall of Fame resume, but it’s still interesting how another Super Bowl would impact his legacy. For the past few years, we thought that night in Glendale was the last night of the Patriots dynasty, as, while the Patriots remained one of the league’s elite teams, injuries and underperforming teams kept them out of even the conference championship game. It’s been something like seven years since Brady’s last Super Bowl, and at his age it’s fair to wonder how many more seasons he has left in him. Seeing Drew Bledsoe, the man whose injury set the stage for his entire career, handing out the Lamar Hunt Trophy, you had to wonder if it was a fitting bookend to his career. How would one last postscript Super Bowl to tie Joe Montana be seen when we look back on Brady’s storied career?

Throw in the game being played in Indianapolis, home of Eli’s brother and the Patriots’ main rival over the past decade, and it’s easy to see why Peyton Manning’s shadow hangs over the game, and why there are still plenty of storylines for Giants-Patriots II.

Quick sports graphics update

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Two new developments and something I forgot from last time add up to a short new sports graphics update.

I have to say, I’m not a fan of NBC’s new post-relaunch graphics package, which looks really bulky and amateur. It almost looks more designed for Comcast SportsNet’s purposes than anything else. The text is off-center enough that it actually looks like some of my PowerPoint mockups.

On the plus side, NBC learned their lesson from their last change to their timeout indicators and this is some of the best I’ve seen from a graphic designed for them.

Also, NBC, ESPN, and Turner are all now using two-line boxes for the display of player info, leaving only the NFL’s main partners, CBS and Fox.

On the NBA front, ESPN continues to tweak old graphics to fit them into the new graphics package, continuing to make me wonder what the point is because aesthetically, it looks worse than the old one. And the NBA package continues to use the two-line format for whatever reason. On the other hand, there appears to be some sort of weird drop-shadow effect, and the specific graphics used for player info is the same as for college basketball.

Oddly, FSN went to spelling out team names for its new NBA graphics. I call it odd because if there’s any version of basketball (or really any sport) where the use of full names over abbreviations is justified, it’s college basketball. So why did FSN decide to continue wasting space for the college game but fill the space for the NBA? I could see if the NBA graphic was redesigned later, because the NBA season started later, but does that mean FSN will change its college graphics to match?

Also, ESPN deciding to indicate when teams are in the bonus may be becoming a trend, because FSN’s new NBA graphics do the same thing… in one of the most awful ways I’ve seen. If you’re going to have such a space hog you might as well at least put timeout indicators on it. We’re going to be in for some awful graphics for the next couple years. Be afraid… be very afraid.

I forgot to mention the Big Ten Network on my last roundup, perhaps because I blocked out the hideous way they showed the down and distance the first week of the season. Who thought this was a good idea? WHO?!?

If they wanted to preserve the shape, shouldn’t they have designed it to begin with to shrink neatly like Fox’s graphics? Thankfully, they eventually came to their senses. Beyond that mess, the BTN’s new graphics mostly serve the purpose of bringing them closer to the rest of the Fox stable, without quite being the same thing.

This next video will mean we don’t have an all-YouTube graphics roundup, but thank god, because YouTube in Chrome coming from Google Video Search, which should be a harmonious homogenous experience, was a complete nightmare, and you can read my tweeter for the full carnage…

And with that, I expect us to be done until baseball season starts.

The Breeder’s Cup moves to NBC – what it means to all parties

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A while back we started getting TVG network on our digital package. There was a time when I would flip on the channel and become addicted for hours at a time watching races I knew nothing about until ten minutes before post time and didn’t care about. Granted, it was probably because of how fast and furious races could come, but I was probably ready to dance on horse racing’s grave before then and now I often quietly cheer for the sport to stop shooting itself in the foot and make a return to American consciousness.

So I have to say I like the Breeder’s Cup’s new deal with NBC that will put the Cup on NBC and NBC Sports Network starting this year. After the Cup Classic was relegated to cable the past few years, the main NBC network will now put the Classic on in primetime. Don’t get too excited – we’re talking about Saturday, also known as “the night that doesn’t exist as far as the networks are concerned”, which nonetheless is being increasingly colonized by sports like ABC’s “Saturday Night Football” college football franchise – but it should still help the Cup’s aura as the championship of horse racing. Anything that focuses the masses’ attention more on the Cup and less on the Triple Crown can only be good for the sport – as does building a strong identity of being on NBC, which will now have both.

ESPN is pulling a “they didn’t fire us, we quit” card, and may now be out of the horse racing business. But this deal is very, very good for NBC and NBC Sports Network, especially since the non-Classic races may be up there with some of the biggest non-hockey programming on NBCSN. With NBC now being so strongly attached to horse racing, it’s easy to see them loading up even more on the sport, especially to fill time on NBCSN, which could use all the events it can get. NBC and NBCSN already have this past summer’s “Summer at Saratoga” series (highlighted by the famed Travers Stakes) and have signed up to show many of the Derby prep races this spring. I could see NBCSN loading up on as many relatively top-notch horse races as it can on Saturday afternoons outside college football season, especially on weekends when NBC has golf commitments, which can certainly only be good for the sport in the long term.

Only one other sporting event has moved from ESPN to NBC since the wars started – and the Belmont Stakes had actually reached an agreement before the NBC/Comcast merger became final. Fox has so far been more successful at taking events away from ESPN, highlighted by the World Cup, and ESPN has been more successful to this point at taking events from NBC than the reverse, highlighted by Wimbledon. To pick up a real win over ESPN, even a small one, has to feel huge inside the NBC Sports offices, and goes a long way towards proving that smaller events can have a home on NBC Sports Network. No wonder ESPN’s denying it was a real “win”. If they were interested, they have to have legitimate concerns right now.

Sport-Specific Networks
6 6.5 4.5 2.5 0 1.5

Da Blog is back, baby!

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Well, I can’t say this was the happiest 36 hours Da Blog has ever had.

First, I found out I’d deleted the plugin I’d used when first setting up Da Blog to hide it from public view, and couldn’t find it again. Then I downloaded a plugin that just coughed up a 503 error whenever I went to a WordPress-powered page – even my admin section, meaning I wound up having to disable all my plugins in my database administration just to undo the damage. Then, after finding a working plugin, I upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, only to discover too late that the plugin I was counting on to pick up the slack for the old one didn’t actually work that way.

So now we’re back on the road, and the Sports and Webcomics subsites are running on the last developmental version of the old plugin until I can find a longer-term solution. There are a few quirks, most notably that the main pages of both sites are currently serving up all my posts instead of just the ones in those categories, but it should still be functional. If you see any other problems, give me a holler in the comments.

However, now I have a new problem: the power went out at our house this morning and might not be back until partway through the weekend. As such, I’m going to queue up a quick post to go out tomorrow to continue the streak and won’t be able to do any more work on Da Blog or the site until Monday at the latest (and I really hope it can be sooner). I know I promised a full-fledged preview of the conference championship games, but the MXSes will have to suffice: Ravens 21½-28½ Patriots, Giants 19¾-22¼ 49ers.

More to come on Monday, including – hopefully – the much-delayed launch of the forum.

2011 College Football Rankings – After Bowls

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After all is said and done, I must, begrudgingly, accept Alabama as my national champion.

Perhaps if LSU had kept it closer, they might have an argument for a split title. Perhaps if Oklahoma State didn’t need overtime to beat an overrated Stanford team, they might have an argument for a split title. But Alabama did what they need to, and now they’re the national champions.

Frankly, this is one of those years where the best solution might be no national champion. None of the teams involved are all that attractive. One good thing about a potential playoff system is that at least any potential champion has spent time building an aura of “champion-ness” by winning the games we consider to have the most value. Perhaps Alabama, or Oklahoma State, or even LSU would seem more legitimate by beating some number of teams along the way.

How the C Ratings are tabulated: First, A Ratings are tabulated by multiplying the total score ratio, which is expressed by (points-opponents’ points)/points, by the winning percentage. Score ratio minimizes the effect of running up the score. Next, B Points for each game are tabulated by (margin of victory)/(opponent’s A rating)+/-1 for wins, and -(margin of loss)/(1-opponent’s A Rating)+/-1 for losses. The “+/-” is + for road games and – for home ones. The total number of B Points is multiplied by the A Rating to get the B Rating. Finally, the C Rating is tabulated by taking one-tenth the difference between the team’s B Rating and the average of his opponents’ B Ratings and taking the result off the B Rating. The three ratings go A, B, C across. Click here to see the complete ratings.

1 Alabama SEC ’06 Boise St.
12-1 LW: A Rat: .796 B Rating: 67.874 C Rating: 59.634 AP: 1 BCS: 1
Say what you will about the BCS system, it is true what the Tide fans are saying: they won the one that counted.
2 LSU SEC SEC Champ.
13-1 LW: A Rat: .720 B Rating: 64.064 C Rating: 56.912 AP: 2 BCS: 2
On the plus side, Les Miles proved this year that his first national championship wasn’t just the result of inheriting Nick Saban’s players.
3 Oklahoma State B12 Fiesta Bowl
12-1 LW: A Rat: .651 B Rating: 55.805 C Rating: 47.798 AP: 3 BCS: 3
Sorry, but national championship teams don’t need overtime to beat teams that didn’t win their conference. Can I seriously expect you to have beaten Alabama?
4 Boise State MWC Maaco Bowl
12-1 LW: A Rat: .717 B Rating: 47.456 C Rating: 38.482 AP: 8 Coaches: 6
Kellen Moore ended his college career with a bang, blowing out an Arizona State team that looked like the third-best team in the Pac-10 at one point this season.
5 Wisconsin B10 Big 10 Champ.
11-3 LW: A Rat: .594 B Rating: 36.909 C Rating: 29.645 AP: 10

 Coaches: 11
The Badgers kept it close enough against the Ducks that they don’t move below them.
6 Houston USA TicketCity
13-1 LW: A Rat: .695 B Rating: 38.024 C Rating: 29.006 AP: 18 Coaches: 14
Houston proved their season wasn’t a fluke in demolishing a good Penn State team.
7 Oregon P12 Rose Bowl
12-2 LW: A Rat: .611 B Rating: 34.317 C Rating: 28.226 AP: 4 Coaches: 4
The win over Wisconsin wasn’t impressive and the Pac-12 didn’t do that great in the bowls, but it took Stanford losing to a top-3 team for people to realize, “Wait, Oregon won this conference and Stanford didn’t for a reason.”
8 Oklahoma B12 Insight Bowl
10-3 LW: A Rat: .534 B Rating: 31.655 C Rating: 26.064 AP: 16 Coaches: 15
Big win over Iowa didn’t do much to impress the voters in the final standings.
9 Michigan B10 Sugar Bowl
11-2 LW: A Rat: .586 B Rating: 22.677 C Rating: 18.480 AP: 12 Coaches: 9
Yes, it was Virginia Tech. Yes, it took overtime. But Michigan did their darndest to prove how deserving of a BCS bowl they really were.
10 Stanford P12 Fiesta Bowl
11-2 LW: A Rat: .617 B Rating: 23.190 C Rating: 17.428 AP: 7 Coaches: 7
Luck and the Cardinal gave all they could, but Oklahoma State, in the end, was the better team, even if marginally so.
11 Southern Miss USA Hawaii Bowl
12-2 LW: A Rat: .586 B Rating: 21.956 C Rating: 14.893 AP: 20 Coaches: 19
The win over Nevada did move them up a couple of spots in the polls, even though it was by only a touchdown.
12 South Carolina SEC Capital One
11-2 LW: A Rat: .576 B Rating: 15.962 C Rating: 12.501 AP: 9 Coaches: 8
Big win over a good Huskers team isn’t enough to put the Cocks in the top ten, but Spurrier has definitely built an elite program.
13 Arkansas SEC Cotton Bowl
11-2 LW: #14 A Rat: .557 B Rating: 16.227 C Rating: 11.767 AP: 5 Coaches: 5
Arkansas didn’t quite blow K-State out of the water, and South Carolina is still ahead of them, but they do move up across the board even if they were overrated already.
14 TCU MWC MWC Champ.
11-2 LW: #12 A Rat: .606 B Rating: 17.332 C Rating: 11.036 AP: 14 Coaches: 13
Sorry, but I’m not going to give TCU the benefit of the doubt when they needed a fourth-quarter comeback to beat Louisiana Tech.
15 USC P12 ’09 Boise St.
10-2 LW: #15 A Rat: .559 B Rating: 11.199 C Rating: 6.697 AP: 6 SBNBlog: 12
As I expected, with almost everyone back and the team off probation people are talking up USC as a preseason national championship favorite… so why am I hearing about so many transfers leaving?
16 Florida State ACC Chmps Sprts
9-4 LW: #20 A Rat: .483 B Rating: 9.244 C Rating: 5.335 AP: 23 Coaches: 23
It was a low-scoring, tight game, but it was over a very good team, ranked ahead of them in the rankings, so a big move for the Seminoles.
17 Toledo MAC Military Bowl
9-4 LW: #19 A Rat: .422 B Rating: 8.725 C Rating: 5.136 — —
Bit too close for comfort against a 7-6 team to justify ranking them for half the year, but at least they won, which teams below them can’t say.
18 Georgia SEC
10-4 LW: A Rat: .462 B Rating: 7.658 C Rating: 4.876 AP: 19 Coaches: 20
Georgia fought valiantly for three overtimes before falling to a very good Spartans team.
19 Notre Dame  
8-5 LW: A Rat: .361 B Rating: 6.954 C Rating: 4.242 — —
The Golden Domers should have mixed feelings about their season. On one hand, they’re 8-5. On the other, their losses were like their Champs Sports bowl: they fought hard to the end.
20 Texas A&M B12 Meineke C. C.
6-6 LW: #23 A Rat: .336 B Rating: 6.519 C Rating: 2.957 — —
A&M not only showed Northwestern how good they’ve really been, they did so in a big way, albeit close to home. But still no one is noticing.
21 Virginia Tech ACC
11-3 LW: #18 A Rat: .502 B Rating: 5.976 C Rating: 2.893 AP: 21 Coaches: 17
Virginia Tech fought hard to prove they belonged in a BCS bowl, but the only reason it went to overtime was that people had doubts about their opponent too.
22 West Virginia* BST Prncton/Yale
10-3 LW: A Rat: .470 B Rating: 4.565 C Rating: 1.812 AP: 17 Coaches: 18
What an embarrassment for the ACC. What a statement by the Mountaineers.
23 Northern Illinois MAC GoDaddy.com
11-3 LW: #27 A Rat: .473 B Rating: 4.414 C Rating: -.614 — —
One of the Huskies’ strongest seasons during their recent run even earned them quite a few poll votes.
24 Missouri* B12 Independence
8-5 LW: A Rat: .380 B Rating: .432 C Rating: -1.991 — —
The Tigers say goodbye to the Big 12 on a high note with a big win over North Carolina.
25 Rutgers
(9-4, .428, -.361, -2.804)		 BST Pinstripe


2010 TCU Title: Baylor (10-3), .447, -1.730, -4.030

Off Top 25: #26 Michigan State (was ), #27 Nebraska (was #21), #34 Penn State (was #25), #37 Clemson (was #23)

Watch List: #26 Michigan State

Other Positive B Ratings: Ohio, #30 Temple* (*=Newly Positive)

No Longer Positive: #27 Nebraska, Louisiana Tech, Utah State, #37 Clemson, #40 Arkansas State

Best game of year: LSU @ Alabama / BCS Championship Game: Alabama v. LSU (tie)

A Miniature Preview of the Divisional Games

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All games are listed with their respective median expected scores.

Saints 25½-21½ 49ers
Fox, Saturday 4:30pm ET, announcers: Kenny Albert, Daryl Johnston, Tony Siragusa
Most people still haven’t seen enough of the Niners to trust them enough, but the Saints are playing better than they have been all season. Then again, they’ve always been a different team at home than on the road; only time will tell if the Niners have the defense to stop Drew Brees and Co.

Broncos 18½-32 Patriots
CBS, Saturday 8pm ET, announcers: Jim Nantz, Phil Simms
If I was a betting man, I’d put good money on the Broncos, and maybe put a little on the under as well. Forget about Tebow for a second. The Pats’ defense… isn’t that great, while the Broncos have been winning with their defense. Even if you don’t think the Broncos are going to win, that MXS doesn’t make much sense to me, especially if you think what we saw last week from Tebow is a sign he’s becoming an actual quarterback.

Texans 14¼-21¾ Ravens
CBS, Sunday 1pm ET, announcers: Greg Gumbel, Dan Dierdorf
That’s one of the lower MXS scores I’ve seen all season (though not the lowest of the playoffs – Denver had an MXS of 13 for their game with the Steelers). I know the Ravens have a vaunted defense, but the Texans offense isn’t chopped liver, even with T.J. Yates as their quarterback. Despite how well the Texans played all year, this game has the feel of the Texans being the sacrificial lamb to allow the Ravens to move on in a game no one will watch, but if I was a betting man, I’d split the Texans with the over, with more money on the over.

Giants 22¾-30¼ Packers
Fox, Sunday 4:30pm ET, announcers: Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, Pam Oliver, Chris Myers
The Giants are on such a winning streak, looked so dominant against the Falcons, and looked so good against the Packers that people have forgotten that they needed to beat the Cowboys the last week of the regular season to make the playoffs at 9-7 and are talking about them maybe possibly giving the Packers a hard time if not upsetting them. Actually, people have kind of forgotten that the Packers almost went undefeated. Really, people tend to forget everything about the regular season once the playoffs start.

What the New York City Marathon’s new TV deal says about the sports TV wars

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You probably don’t care all that much about the New York City Marathon, but its recent deal with ESPN says a lot as we approach the one-year anniversary of the start of the Wars.

Previously, the New York City Marathon had aired on Universal Sports, a network most people probably haven’t heard of, and WNBC-TV in New York, with NBC airing edited highlights later. It’s quite understandable that the Marathon would want a network that could give it a truly national audience (especially with Universal Sports losing a lot of households at the start of the year as it transitioned away from airing on NBC stations’ digital feeds), but that didn’t necessarily mean leaving NBC, now that NBC has the NBC Sports Network in the fold.

I don’t know if NBCSN had other plans for that day, but it still shows that NBC has a long way to go to prove that it’s a viable platform for smaller events on par with even ESPN2.

Sport-Specific Networks
6 5.5 4.5 2.5 0 1.5

It’s the MorganWick.com National Championship Pregame Show!

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I’m frantically running around trying to make sure I have classes for the coming quarter (as in, the quarter that’s almost a week old already), so I only have one thing to say about the national championship game, which I won’t be watching.

The MXS for the game is Alabama 21¾-19¾. No, I have no idea why Alabama is favored when LSU won the first game on Alabama’s home turf and is playing closer to home.

Final college football rankings coming Tuesday, hopefully, though I wouldn’t bet on it.

Predictions for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2012

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The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s selections are performed by a panel of 44 leading NFL media members including representatives of all 32 NFL teams, a representative of the Pro Football Writers of America, and 11 at-large writers.

The panel has selected a list of 15 finalists from the modern era, defined as playing all or part of their careers within the last 25 years. A player must have spent 5 years out of the league before they can be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame. Players that last played in the 2006 season will be eligible for induction in 2012.

During Super Bowl Weekend, the panel will meet and narrow down the list of modern-era finalists down to five. Those five will be considered alongside two senior candidates, selected by a nine-member subpanel of the larger panel last August, for a total of seven. From this list, at least four and no more than seven people will be selected for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

My prediction for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2012 is:

Curtis Martin
Andre Reed
Dermontti Dawson
Cortez Kennedy
Charles Haley
Jack Butler
Dick Stanfel

Hall of Fame Game: Steelers v. Jets